The following is a guest post by Wendy Hughes. Wendy is a resident of Southern California, a volunteer at CFI-LA and JREF, investigator with the Independent Investigations Group (IIG-West), and co-founder The Odds Must Be Crazy (featured on Skepicality). You can find Wendy on Twitter as @wendy91602.

For over two years I have seen my community appear to divide like an amoeba. The division is over issues that seemed at first to be misunderstandings and hyperbole. I propose that this division can be explained by theories advanced by psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs that I learned in a parenting class in the 1980s. I urge readers who are undecided about the validity of claims about this division to consider my proposal when evaluating them.

I confess to not being a blog reader. My version of activism is engaging with my grassroots skepticism group in testing claims of paranormal ability. I love the investigations. It’s a hands-on activity; I get to really do the work, not just read the accounts of others. The books, the canon, such as it is, are important. The books and magazines are how I learned that there is a name for what I like, and groups that enjoy the exercise of critical thinking; but they are substitutes for assessing paranormal claims and designing the demonstrations to test the claims.

A friend suggested that the reason why I don’t perceive any sexism among skeptics used this analogy. He thought that people who listened to Dr. Phil Plait’s DBAD (Don’t Be A Dick) speech at TAM 8 who thought of themselves as never having behaved dickishly toward believers thought the speech was inoffensive and inspirational; but those who knew that they had been rude or critical of people who accept what we call woo woo heard Dr. Plait’s speech very differently. My friend said if listeners saw themselves that way, the DBAD speech seemed like an attack or criticism, not a friendly reminder that the human brain has evolved to pay attention to the false positive – that the brain of modern humans makes this mistake because we are the descendants of those who mistook the wind in the bushes for a predator, and pattern seeking is our specialty.

I think my friend was suggesting that the reason the claims of misogyny seem exaggerated to me is because I have not had the experience of receiving hate mail or discrimination because of my gender. The reason I was minimizing the necessity for action on the part of the secularist organizations to focus on the needs of women, he thought, was because I could not relate to the experiences of others. That sounded profound, and tried to live with it for awhile – I examined my feelings and memory for an appraisal of empathy for my fellow skeptics. I asked around among my friends for their opinions, and realized there was not unanimity on this topic – especially among women. Some of the men I asked said they just kept their opinions to themselves, because it was safer that way; that for a white male, giving any kind of opinion was a sure way to attract criticism and be labeled as a misogynist or worse, and all without ever having done any harm to any woman, ever.

But my friend was wrong about a few things. First: I married for the first time at age 18; my first husband was abusive. So I lived for six years fearing for my life, the person closest to me a ticking time bomb. For over a decade after that experience, I had what was probably PTSD – one day, I heard another couple fighting in the next apartment, and the woman was calling out for my help. I froze. I could not move to help her. It was as if their argument was threatening me, even though I was safely divorced from the person who’d actually engaged in domestic violence. So – I not only sympathize with women who’ve experienced violence, I am one of them.

Second: That I can’t identify with the claims of rape. I remember being slightly coerced, but not violently raped. However, it has happened to people I know and care about.

Yet, many men charged with, and convicted for rape have been exonerated. There is no question that a woman deserves the opportunity to bring her case if she thinks she has been a victim of criminal violation; but that in no way should take away the right of the accused to a fair trial.

I have experienced sexual harassment on the job, but it was such a long time ago, and the business environment was so different in those days, it almost seemed normal. Feeling as if my job security depended on what I wore to work, hearing the supervisor advise my co-worker to wear a T-shirt because it would influence customers to spend more money at our business, all seemed like business as usual; yet today, it is a punishable offense. When so-called women’s liberation was first starting up in the 1970s, it seemed to be directed to women with careers. I was a stay-at-home mom; it didn’t seem to include me. Now I realize that I should have felt included – that women’s liberation, gender equality, applies to all women.

Furthermore, I recently learned that another woman I know well, who was brutally raped and left for dead almost forty years ago, uses the date of that experience as a password for some of her electronic media. I tried imagine how it feels to not only live with that memory for the rest of her life, but to have to key in the date on a regular basis just to access some online account. She lives a fairly normal life, has a significant other in her life, drives, shops, helps with family responsibilities, the whole catastrophe. In fact, it’s easy to forget that she is a survivor because she functions so well – as does an adult woman I know who was a victim of statutory rape when she was a teenager. I think, unfortunately, we are all victims of some kind of aggressive behavior at one time or another; but there are degrees.

My first response, though, to the claims that the secularist organizations should focus on women’s issues, was economic. The skepticism community is small. There are lots of organizations supporting women’s issues (e.g., NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood; local, national and international). Additionally, I began noticing much more distraction when I was associating with my friends and activities in the skepticism community. It wasn’t as much fun anymore, and the gossip and opinions were interfering with my friendships.

Later, I began to remember the lessons I learned as a parent of teenagers. A school counselor recommended that my husband and I take a parenting class. The course was designed on the theories of Rudolf Dreikurs. I wondered if the strategies learned in the parenting class could be applied to restore the sense of belonging I had found so compelling when I discovered the community of skeptics.

When my kids were teenagers, I was at my wits’ end. My children were completely out of control, and the usual methods to rein them in: taking away privileges, grounding them, yelling and threatening, were not helping. In the parenting class, we were promised that we would learn how to get them to cooperate. People have a strong need to “belong,” to be a part of a group or community. This built-in drive can be leveraged for good or evil. Seen in this way, it’s understandable why young people are attracted to gangs or Greek letter clubs, gravitate toward organized sports, try to find others with common interests. What I learned in that parenting class helped me a lot at the time; I think it helped my children, too. Although I don’t use the skills consciously every day, I learned how to identify what emotion is being expressed and the best way to respond to that signal.

One early example was seeing my stepson sitting on the couch with a sorrowful expression on his face. Practicing, I said, “You look sad.” He relaxed visibly. Most of the time, when there is disharmony, people just need to be heard. Agreement is not always necessary; being heard is usually enough. Paraphrasing the claims of a colleague, a claimant for a paranormal challenge, or an adversary in a debate are examples of this strategy.

Some of the emotions that we learned to identify and deal with were identified by mistaken goals: attention, power, revenge, and displays of inadequacy.

Although the parenting class directed the participants to observe their children’s misbehavior, the strategy has as much to do with one’s own reactions. The advice was to observe my own feelings and sensations, think about what I usually did about them, and observe how my children responded in order to figure out what the goal of their misbehavior was. In other words, my own response was a clue to my child’s goal; it works pretty well with adults, too.

Annoyance/Attention:
For example, if I was feeling annoyed, my usual response was to scold or nag. The child’s usual response was to stop annoying, but only briefly. The child’s goal was attention.There are other explanations that may fit just as well; the parenting class was employing a particular discipline. At the time, when I tried to think of annoyance as the child tapping me on the shoulder, instead of defiant misbehavior, it was useful to keep in the back of my mind that by doing a chore, this child would feel like a contributing part of a family.

It bothers me that there is distraction from the work of skepticism. I want to do the investigations, commune with my friends and colleagues, work for consumer protection, testing of claims of the paranormal. Would it be better for the skepticism community to just let the claims and counterclaims play out in the criminal justice system? Do we really have to take sides when we don’t know the details that constitute evidence and the law that that has to be applied? By letting it bother me, distract me from my projects, I’m giving it attention that won’t help me or the community, let alone the claimants. That doesn’t mean I don’t care, but will my attention will really help solve their problem?

Anger/Power:
In parenting, sometimes anger is the key to the transaction. If I felt angry or threatened, my responses could be to punish, fight back or, possibly, just give in. The responses could include continued misbehavior, defiance, or slow and sloppy semi-obedience. What I had been engaging in with my teenagers was a power struggle. How many times has your response with a parent, employer, camp counselor or law enforcement officer been seeing-red anger? How many times has someone close to you responded to some action you’ve taken with anger that surprised you? If you have no recourse, no dialog, no opportunity to negotiate, identifying a power struggle is a step toward remedying the situation.

I don’t perceive a power struggle between me and my friends and colleagues. There are differences of opinion, but we’ll see eventually how things work out when more information is available. If I worry about it too much, finding it difficult to decide what to think, it’s because there is not enough information. As soon as there is enough information, the right decision will seem obvious.

Hurt/Revenge:
When someone is close to you, they learn your “buttons” to push, the issues that you hold dear. For some of us, these include aspects of the broader society: politics, women’s issues, race relations. I’ve seen holiday dinners with family turn into shouting matches when one relative needles another about a known special concern. The response was a ping-pong game of trying to get even. After the parenting classes, when I thought about those holidays, it seemed as if the adults in my family had been playing out a pattern of revenge for past conflicts.

If I as a skeptic am hurt, it’s because I think that others are refusing to cooperate. It bothers me to realize that some of my closest colleagues are ready to give up on the skepticism organizations and groups, and that I will be lonely without them. It’s a threat to my sense of belonging. We all come from different backgrounds, we have had different experiences; it would be strange if we all had the exact same values. I don’t really think the failure to cooperate is aimed at me. Someone, somewhere, has had a bad experience, and the reverberations are being felt by all of us. We all respond in a way that is appropriate for us personally. In this way, I understand that this conflict between skeptics is not the first of its kind, that it has a beginning and an end, and will not be the last. It will not destroy skepticism. We may not recognize it a year from now; but critical thinking will not go away because of it.

Hopelessness/Inadequacy:
Finally, when I felt like giving up, hopeless to ever solve a problem, the hopelessness is a clue to the child’s feelings of inadequacy. The family suffering with a child’s drug abuse or other troubling chronic behavior is familiar with the lack of response – the seeming inability to change.

If I feel hopeless, who is demonstrating inadequacy? Maybe it’s the whole community. People I counted on to be able to come up with rational responses in stressful situations are instead finger pointing, making up apps to block one another, and therefore refuse to communicate. They are yelling past one another, and trying to communicate huge important ideas in 140 characters or less.

Can this be helpful in the Skepticism community?
It wasn’t as if my family suddenly turned into a TV fantasy of civil behavior and polite discourse. It did, however, seem to help us. It occurred to me recently that if we tried to apply the lessons from that parenting class to the recent conflicts in the skepticism community, it may alleviate some of the stress.

We evolved to use more than just spoken language. We use and respond to nonverbal cues – see the expressions on one another’s faces, notice changes in posture, and hear the emphasis placed on words and phrases. We tend to seek patterns and see bifurcated monolithic sides to an argument instead of the unique and distinct thought processes individuals can share in a conversation. We can focus on our strengths and talents. Notice when someone, anyone, makes a wise choice. We must pay attention for the moments when any of us thinks a kind thought for someone else. And finally, encouragement is needed to work together toward our common goals of science and critical thinking and against our common opponents of superstition and pseudoscience.

Each individual has the ability to make judgments about what is “right”, in terms of what is true or correct and in terms of what is moral or ethical. These judgments are the basis for personal knowledge and for personal moral codes. The terms “rational” and “irrational” can apply in either case.

Skepticism is about shared knowledge, but the process of gaining shared knowledge can be easily mapped onto shared morality.

In science, the closest that we can come to what is right (as in “correct”) is whatever the consensus of experts in the field say is most likely right. This is one of the reasons that I cite for why conclusions-based activism is not good skepticism.

You see, the problem is that everybody thinks that their beliefs (i.e., what they hold to be true) are correct; that’s the very definition of “belief”. What’s more is that everybody thinks that they arrived at their beliefs through logic and evaluation of evidence. Everyone. This is a problem because unless we all agree, we cannot all be “right”. So, anyone who insists that their beliefs be adopted by everyone is basically saying “I know the absolute truth for certain,” which is the ultimate display of arrogance and irrationality.

So where does that put skeptical activism? Right where we left it, because good skeptical activism addresses the questions, not the answers. As I have discussed in several blog posts now, good skepticism doesn’t involve telling people that there is no such thing as ghosts or psychic abilities. It involves examining evidence and providing alternative explanations for phenomena. It involves education about this method.

On rare occasions when Skepticism (big-S refers to organized skeptical activism & scientific skepticism) addresses conclusions, it does so because an overwhelming scientific consensus is common knowledge and the consequences of failing to recognize that consensus are potentially very harmful. Again, this is rare; some examples that come to mind are vaccine safety and climate change.

Shared knowledge demands the consensus of those with expertise who have followed a number of steps designed to reduce the impact of human biases and heuristics. It is a process that works slowly, but works well overall.

Moral judgments are not very different from judgments about truth. Good moral reasoning uses critical thinking (i.e., considering plausible alternatives and hidden facts) and is open-minded. As with reasoning about facts, moral reasoning is subject to a number of biases and heuristics which favor what we currently believe and what we want to believe.

As with reasoning about facts, arrogance and cognitive laziness are sources of irrational behavior. We fail to consider long-term ramifications of moral judgments, especially when we choose to act on them. For example, we fail to consider that there may be trade-offs between safety and personal freedoms (think TSA). We fail to consider what we may not know about a situation. We fail to recognize fraud, framing, and spin, especially if the outcome supports our views. We fail to hold our views tentatively while we consider alternatives and we favor the choices that promote our personal goals (e.g., allow us to keep our friendships intact).

As with reasoning about facts, human beings will jump through all kinds of hoops to reconcile conflicting attitudes and actions so that we can maintain our self-image. We justify, rationalize, redefine, backpedal, redirect, and use all of those other wonderful self-deception tools.

As with reasoning about facts, if we don’t all agree on what’s right/righteous, then we can’t all be right/righteous.

As with reasoning about “facts” almost everyone believes that their own moral compass points to what is righteous.

So how do we have justice? Where do we get shared morality? Through something we call the justice system.

Like science, the justice system is imperfect, but self-correcting. Laws are created and changed as culture changes and mistakes are made. It is complex, but built on a strong foundation (in the U.S., we have the constitution) and flexible.

Like science, we are all responsible for providing fuel and direction. In science, that includes the problems that human beings need solved, such as the technology to explore outer space. This dictates priorities for science and encourages the growth of funding sources. In morality, it’s changing culture and technological advances that provide priorities and encourage changes in laws.

Science provides a framework that is adopted outside of the formal process (e.g., academic research and publishing) in many ways. We use scientific methods to investigate crimes and to produce technology. Likewise, the legal process inspires policies such as rules and regulations in employment situations and grievance processes.

Again, both of these are imperfect systems.

However, given all of their imperfections and our tendency to discard them when convenient, science is the best system we have for gaining and sorting out shared knowledge (what’s right) and the system based on our constitution is the best system we have for dealing with issues of justice (what’s righteous).

Whether science or the justice system, when it does not tell us what we want to hear, human beings tend to leave it behind. And that’s a mistake.

Skeptical activism is about promoting scientific consensus and the methods used to achieve it. It’s about limiting the impact of those who choose to circumvent those methods.

This is my tiny effort to limit the impact of those who choose to circumvent methods of shared morality.